The Boastful Baker

me and the Atlantic Ocean

How do I fall behind in posting so easily?

First, the picture above is me looking at the Atlantic Ocean. We went camping in the Outer Banks last weekend…our second camping trip of the year. Other than the cold shower I had to take the next morning, all was well on this trip. The boyfriend’s new tent continues to work well…we’ll test it again Memorial Day weekend…we’re supposed to go camping in the mountains (Shenandoah National Park, I think) with some of his friends (and some of their friends).

Here’s the boyfriend and I at our campsite…which sat up on a dune. The ocean is off in the distance…too bad you can’t see it in the picture.

A few weeks ago, I made the raspberry rhubarb tart pictured below as an experiment. I’ve claimed not to like strawberry rhubarb pie for a long time…I’ve always blamed the rhubarb. Recently it occurred to me that it’s probably the cooked strawberry part that I don’t like. So I made the raspberry rhubarb tart and loved it. Rhubarb is fine. If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t have realized it was in the tart…despite having used as much rhubarb as raspberries.

The last food picture to catch up on for the day are Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies…these have a couple of kinds of chocolate in the dough and I used 4 differents kinds of chips (including white chocolate). These were great…almost like a brownie cookie. The recipe was found in Baking Illustrated. Have I mentioned my love of this cookbook?

That’s it for food for today. I’m sick today but I hope to feel better tomorrow so that I can cook again. I’m thinking about no-knead bread. I should probably hold off on a dessert for a few more days…until more of my birthday cake is gone. The boyfriend made red velvet cake for me.

My birthday itself was good. I had lunch at the Blue Talon Bistro with my dad. Then the boyfriend made dinner for me…grilled ribeye steaks. And the red velvet cake. I got a good number of thoughtful cooking related gifts…including my own copy of Desserts by the Yard and a trifle bowl I spotted and wanted a while ago…now to make the hazelnut and Kahlua trifle recipe I found a couple months ago.

The progress on the house continues slowly. They appeared to be building the kitchen and dining room wrong but that’s been corrected and they’re now framing the second story. I’ll still believe it when I see it that the house will be complete by the end of July.

I need to get the boyfriend to figure out how to add flickr and twitter badges to this page…I think it can be done but it requires his assistance with the plugins for it.

I guess I’m done for the day…two recipes and a real post are pretty good for me.

S’mores Tart

The idea for this one came me to when were camping last month…I was eating real S’mores (with the fantastic substitution of Nutella for the chocolate bars) over the campfire.

I came home and did a little bit of research for the recipe. I didn’t find any S’mores Tarts anywhere on the web. So I made up the crust based on S’mores bar recipe I got from a friend many years ago…it’s more buttery and more like a cookie than a normal graham cracker crust. The boyfriend and I decided that a Chocolate Chess Pie filling would be good for the chocolate part of the tart…so he gave me his recipe for the filling (source unknown). Then I found a marshmallow meringue topping recipe on epicurious.com (from a 2007 Bon Appetit magazine). I went a step further and torched the top for a bit more toasted marshmallow flavor.

Be warned…this is very sweet, very rich, and very decadent. A small slice is enough. I got in trouble with the boyfriend for giving too much of this away to my coworkers. He’s usually fine with me giving things away…not this time.

Here’s the recipe:

Graham Crust Ingredients:

• 1/2 box graham crackers, crushed
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into chunks
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 large egg, beaten

Chocolate Filling Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 2 large eggs
• 7 tablespoons unsweeted cocoa powder
• 2/3 cup evaporated milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Marshmallow Meringue Topping Ingredients:

• 1 7-ounce jar Kraft Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme
• 3 large egg whites
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup sugar

For the crust:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Mix graham crackers, flour, and sugars together in medium bowl. Cut butter into dry mixture using a pastry blender until it resembles a coarse meal. Stir in beaten egg.

Press crust into an 11″ tart pan (or you could use a 9″ pie pan if you’d prefer a pie). Set aside.

For the filling:
Using a stand mixer or hand mixer, mix all ingredients for chocolate filling in the order listed.

Pour filling into prepared tart pan and bake for approximately 45 minutes.

Cool to at least room temperature. If you have time, refridgerate before adding marshmallow meringue topping.

For the topping:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Using rubber spatula, scrape marshmallow creme into large bowl.

Using an electric mixr, beat egg whites and salt in another large bowl until foamy. Add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time and beat until stiff and glossy peaks form.

Add 1/2 cup beaten egg whites to marshmallow creme and stir with rubber spatula until just incorporated. At this stage, the marshmallow creme will be very sticky and difficult to blend, but it will become easier as the remaining egg whites are folded in. Fold in remaining whites in 2 additions until just incorporated. Spread or pipe meringue over top of cold pie. Swirl with a knife to create peaks or use the pastry bag to do the same.

Bake pie just until peaks and ridges of marshmallow meringue are lightly browned, about 4 minutes. If desired, you can use a kitchen torch to lightly brown some of the peaks (I did!). Let stand at room temperature until meringue is cool.

Maple Walnut Bars

I got an idea to make these and figured I’d find a recipe for them online. But I didn’t. So I adapted the “Pecan Bars” recipe from Baking Illustrated.

The inspiration for these came from the giant jug of Grade B maple syrup sitting in my fridge. My dad buys gallons of it at a time from an online source. I asked for a syrup refill and he brought me a partially full gallon jug of it. At this point, I either had to start eating a lot more pancakes and waffles or bake something with it.

I thought these were a failure because I didn’t think the bars were going to set properly…the boyfriend was being impatient and wanted one while they were still warm. He kind of scooped one out of the pan…while it was delicious, it didn’t hold its shape. So I put the pan in the fridge to fully chill. After that, they held their shape when cut into bars. I do recommend storing these in the refrigerator as they are pretty gooey.

These may be my favorite baked good of 2008. The boyfriend thinks the S’mores Tart was better. Go figure that both of them are hideously rich and sweet.

The recipe is below and it’s adapted from the “Pecan Bars” recipe on page 496 of Baking Illustrated.

Crust Ingredients:

• 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped coarse
• 6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Filling Ingredients:

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/3 cup light corn syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 6-7 tablespoons maple syrup (I used Grade B)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 3/4 cups walnuts, toasted and chopped coarse

Crust Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8-inch square baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Line baking pan with two sheets of aluminum foil arranged perpendicular to each other. Spray foil with nonstick cooking spray.

Place the flour, baking powder, salt, brown sugar and 1/4 cup walnuts in food processor. Process the mixture until it resembles coarse cornmeal, about five 1-second pulses. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles sand, about eight 1-second pulses. Pat the mixture evenly into the prepared pan and bake until the crust is light brown and springs back when touched, about 20 minutes.

Filling Directions:
While the crust is in the oven, whisk together the melted butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, maple syrup and salt in a medium bowl until just combined. Add the egg and whisk until incorporated.

Pour the filling on top of the hot crust and sprinkle the remaing 1 3/4 cups walnuts evenly over the top. Bake until the top is brown and cracks start to form across the surface, 22 to 25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Transfer to refrigerator and chill completely. Remove from pan and cut into bars of desired size.

Lovely fresh asparagus…

I grilled it and it was delicious. I really liked knowing where it came from…we ate the asparagus with fajita spice rubbed tuna steaks…also grilled. Too bad I delayed that dinner for a while in order to take pictures of the asparagus.

I didn’t follow through on my promise of posting lots of recipes this week. I did a little work on them and then they never made it to the blog. If we don’t end up going camping this weekend, I will post at least a few. I promise.

Work has been a little of a challenge this week as we’ve lost a couple of employees with little to no notice AND it’s the end of the semester for W&M so none of the students want to work because they seem to think they should be studying. Silly students. So it’s been a little bit of a scramble both for shifts this week and for scheduling shifts next week…more of my hours than usual have gone into writing next week’s schedule. But I think it’s done…and I avoided needing to schedule myself to work on my birthday.

I haven’t gotten to cook much this week…which is no fun.

Just wanted to say hello…now I’m off to work.

I’ve intended to post for the last several days. Clearly I got sidetracked somewhere along the line…

Pictured above are some wheat dinner rolls I made last week. They’re an adaptation of Baking Illustrated’s Parker House Rolls recipe. I’ll get the recipe for these on this site soon. I think I’m going to spend a bit of time tonight catching up on recipe stuff both in the database program and on this site.

Anyway, these turned out fantastic. While making these, I did something I’ve never done before but will be doing again. I marked up my cookbook with pencil. I made a couple of changes to the ingredients and realized that writing in my cookbook was the easiest way to write down my alterations. I felt a little guilty doing it.

Now to catch up on some of my other cooking…

This is one of the cherry almond tarts I made last week. I soaked the cherries in amaretto and baked them in an almond shortbread crust with more of the crust crumbled on top.

Campton Place Coffee Cake from Desserts by the Yard…the first coffee cake I’ve ever made that I was genuinely happy with in the end. I’ll post this recipe soon as well. I keep saying that, huh?

These are vegan carrot cupcakes with orange buttercream frosting. These are also my first for-profit baked goods. A coworker asked me if I could bake a batch of cupcakes for his newly-vegan ex-girlfriend. So I did…and I made myself a batch as well. I wanted to make caramel buttercream frosting but vegan caramel sauce isn’t so easy to make…I tried and failed and opted for the orange buttercream.

This is my S’mores Tart. I came up with this one on my own after toasting marshmallow around the campfire last month. It has a very buttery graham cracker crust, a chocolate chess pie filling and is topped with a marshmallow fluff meringue that I hand torched. Rich and decadent. The boyfriend got a little testy because I gave 3 pieces of it away…recipe forthcoming.

Other than the cooking, life is pretty boring. Work is good. We’re busy…which means I make money. That’s always good.

The boyfriend and I went to Charlottesville to visit friends (the boyfriend’s friends from high school and one of their boyfriends) last weekend. We spent the afternoon at a wine festival in the country outside of Charlottesville. None of us consumed too much wine so there aren’t any fun stories to tell…

…but here are some of us laughing at a very drunk woman after she decided to ride on the children’s wagon thing that circled the festival.

So that I’m not leaving anyone out of my blog entry, here’s a picture of Krista and I…Krista took all the other pictures at the festival so this is the only one she’s actually in…

At the festival, I learned that I kind of like some Virginia chardonnays…as long as they’re void of any oaky taste. This surprised me as I really don’t like chardonnays in general. They’re my least favorite white by a long shot. My hatred for Virginia red wine was reiterated by numerous tastings of yucky cabernet francs. I bought no wine but I did get some fantastic bacon and garlic cheese at the festival…that I forgot was in the fridge until just this second. I chose the bacon and garlic flavor over the other excellent choices because it was the one the boyfriend was least likely to devour in a day or two.

The rest of the trip to Charlottesville was good…I got to play on a Wii for the first time. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would and was pretty decent at it right away. This kind of shocked me. If I were to buy a gaming system (which I wouldn’t), I’d want a Wii. We also walked around UVA for a while…which I’d never really done before…and after the walk, I don’t really understand why people want to live in the rooms on the Lawn. They’re kind of dumpy…but I guess people live there for the honor of doing so…not for the walk to the bathrooms. Other than that, we did a fair amount of playing games and sitting in bars…fun and lazy!

Let’s see…other things to talk about?

The boyfriend’s house is still in slow progress. They didn’t do much in the last couple of weeks but apparently started the framing yesterday.

I’m pretty excited about my Flickr stats…I’ve had 50,000 individual views to my photos. I get excited about the little things, huh?